Jersey Boy

How a small beachside town made Todd Frazier into a home run king

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With a knowing grin on his face, Todd Frazier worked his way around the cramped confines of the visitor’s clubhouse at Fenway Park with a large silver tin. He stopped at everybody — teammates, coaches, support staff, media relations, media members — peeling back the aluminum foil covering the container to reveal a coffee cake dusted with white powdered sugar that his mother, Joan, baked and brought up for this trip from the family’s home in Toms River, N.J.

Make no mistake, this was the best coffee cake in New Jersey, if not the world, according to Frazier. It was, quite literally, a slice of home for the White Sox third baseman who’s remained committed to his roots since he rose to national and local fame — and started signing autographs — at the age of 12.

* * *

Long before he was winning a Home Run Derby or becoming the centerpiece of the White Sox’s offseason roster retooling, Frazier was the undersized youngest brother in a family full of athletes. His two older brothers, Charlie and Jeff — who both went on to be MLB Draft picks, Charlie in the sixth round by the Florida Marlins in 1999 and Jeff by the Detroit Tigers in the third round in 2004 — and their friends often didn’t want to pick Todd for their backyard games due to his youth and diminutive stature.

“He was always a little guy to us,” Charlie says. “We always called him ‘Todd the Toad’ because he never grew.”

There was a problem with this exclusion from baseball, football, basketball or whatever game the Fraziers would play, though. Jeff says if Todd was ever left out, he’d go in and tell his father, Charlie Frazier, Sr., that his older brothers wouldn’t let him participate.

So Charlie Frazier, Sr., would come out, take the ball, and say if Todd isn’t playing, nobody’s playing. And all of a sudden, Todd would be on a team. If it was football, he’d be in the middle of the huddle urging his elder teammates to remember, “Hey, I’m here, and I’m going to get open.”

“I think he always had that will in him to say ‘Hey, listen, whether I’m not good enough today or tomorrow, I’m going to keep working and I’m going to prove you wrong,’” Jeff says. “So it was kind of like he had no choice. He had to fight his whole way up. And it’s obviously paid off.”

The competitiveness stretched beyond the backyards and streets around Toms River. Charlie estimates he, Jeff and Todd broke “four or five” ping pong tables as kids because games would get so heated, someone inevitably would slam a corner of the table after losing a game, rendering the surface unplayable.

Charlie and Jeff had the luxury of being the oldest kids, too, when it came to picking their favorite sports teams. Toms River is about the same distance to New York as it is to Philadelphia, so for the kids, there were decisions to be made as to which teams to root for. But there was no way the three Frazier boys were going to root for the same side.

So Charlie and Jeff laid claim to New York’s teams — Charlie was a Yankees and Giants fan, Jeff was a Mets and Jets fan. Todd picked the Boston Red Sox as his childhood team, but when it came to the NFL, he decided to be a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan.

“I tell him every year, have fun with that one, bro,” Jeff laughs.

When Todd and Toms River East reached the Little League World Series, ESPN listed him at 5-foot-2, 104 pounds. The growth spurt came later, sometime around the end of middle school and the beginning of high school. When it did, Todd quickly became able to compete with his athletic siblings.

It’s hard to imagine Frazier, who will compete in his third Home Run Derby Monday night in San Diego and has the most home runs of any White Sox third baseman before the All-Star break, as an underdog. But in his family structure, that’s what he was as a kid. And it’s something he still appreciates to this day.

“I loved every second of it,” Frazier says. “I loved everybody saying, you gotta live up to (them). I couldn’t ask for two better people to look up to and try to live up to. They were always pushing me to be better. … I thank them all the time and whatever records they had, I was trying to get those records and eventually I broke mostly all of them. I thank them every day of the week and I couldn’t ask for two better guys to look up to.”

* * *

The first time Todd Frazier became known for hitting home runs came long before he dramatically won the 2015 Home Run Derby at the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati.

In 1998, in front of a crowd of 41,200 at Howard J. Lamade Stadium — which, by the way, accommodates more fans than 18 major league ballparks, including U.S. Cellular Field — Frazier launched a 1-1 pitch from Kashima, Japan starter Tatsuya Sugata over the left-field wall to lead off the Little League World Series Championship game.

Now 30 years old, Frazier still thinks back to that moment from time to time. It’s hard not to remember it — he has a photo of the moment hanging in his locker in the home clubhouse at U.S. Cellular Field.

Frazier said his coach, Mike Gaynor, told him to take a peek behind him to see where catcher Tomoyuki Okawa was setting up. That’s obviously against the unwritten rules of baseball, and Frazier pretty clearly did it twice. And the second time, Frazier saw Okawa bounce inside.

“We actually caught eyes when we did it,” Frazier laughs. “… I thought he said something in Japanese to me, probably not some kind words.”

So Frazier stepped in the bucket — his front foot pointing between shortstop and third base — and swung with everything he had. His dinger quickly relaxed a team that ultimately had to fight back to secure the first win by a team from the United States in the Little League World Series in five years.

“I just wanted to get things started and get everyone excited,” the 12-year-old Frazier told Little League’s website in 1998.

Frazier, too, got the win in the championship game, with his 1 1/3 innings coming at a critical time. Frazier entered the game in a fifth inning that saw Kashima take the lead. Toms River then scored four runs in the top of the sixth, and Frazier closed things out in the bottom of the sixth to secure a championship.

“When I look back at that kind of stuff, playing in front of 30, 40,000 people, God, it seems like it was so much pressure but we didn’t have any pressure at all,” Frazier recalls. “Just like here today, you’re playing in front of 50, 60,000 people and the pressure’s still off you because it’s just a game. In a way, it’s your job, but it’s just a fun game that you’ve grown up to play and you don’t take any of it for granted because you gotta understand, the one thing in baseball that I’ve come to learn is you’re going to fail more than you succeed.

“And when you can accept that and not expect it, it’s a big difference. You accept failure knowing that you’re going to get up there again and you’re going to have a better opportunity to get on base and drive some runs in.”

Frazier isn’t the first player to play in and win the Little League World Series and later reach the major leagues. But those games in Williamsport were key in developing Frazier into the level-headed, never-too-high-never-too-low player he is today.

“There’s no doubt that the Little League World Series helped him play at the next level,” Frazier’s father, Charlie, says. “There’s no doubt.”

* * *

Jordan Descafano remembers a moment the winter after Todd Frazier won the Little League World Series, when the pair were playing in a basketball tournament in New Jersey. Frazier excelled at other sports besides baseball — Descafano figured he could’ve developed into a pretty good college or pro quarterback — and when winter rolled around, it was basketball season.

So Descafano and Frazier’s team was warming up for their game, doing the usual drills. As the team is in the layup line, Descafano realized Frazier wasn’t participating in it.

“All of a sudden I look and he’s signing autographs in the corner to older kids,” Descafano, one of Frazier’s closest friends, says. “Fourteen-year-old kids, he’s signing baseballs, basketballs.

“That’s Todd. Nothing’s changed.”

The Fraziers always had a reputation as an athletic family around Toms River, but Todd’s home run and win in the Little League World Series elevated him to local stardom. He got to go up to Yankee Stadium and stand next to Derek Jeter at shortstop — the position he played for Toms River East — before a Yankees game. The parade Toms River held for its Little League champions was “insane,” Frazier’s dad says, with a crowd so large it was almost impossible to get to the field where the parade ended.

“They put us on a fire truck, drove us around Toms River for about an hour and the streets were packed,” Todd says. “It was crazy. Everybody’s out on the streets. Hundreds of thousands of people coming from not only Toms River but all across the East Coast and even further. It was a whirlwind, man. It was a whirlwind time for us. We dominated the world, we took it by storm. I don’t know how a bunch of 11 and 12 year olds did it, but we did.”

With a swing of a bat and a dog pile in Pennsylvania, Frazier got his first taste of fame. Descafano recalls getting to see three movies for the price of one, with help from local cops, when he would go to the local theater with Frazier.

“He thought he was a bad, badass,” Todd’s brother, Charlie, says.

But Frazier’s parents and brothers weren’t about to let his success go to his head. His father’s mantra was “stay under the radar.”

So whenever Todd or any of the kids got a little too cocky, the patriarch of the family would raise his hand above his head and say: “You’re here right now,” and as he lowered his hand to his hip, he’d say, “I want you here.”

“All three of us had success, even at a younger age,” Jeff says. “We’d be seven, eight, nine years old, putting home runs out, I think each of us in Pop Warner football scored like 20 touchdowns a season. Basketball, we all scored 1,000 points. So we had every right to let our heads get swollen a little bit, but if we even started to act like we were the big shots in town or something, it wasn’t somebody else telling us. It was Big Fraz.

“That kind of discipline is still instilled in us now. So him doing that, gosh, it meant the world to us. Because easily we could’ve got away with everything and easily we could’ve just thought we were hot stuff. Him doing that and the discipline he instilled definitely made us the people we are today.

“You got a 6-8 guy raising a paw that’s about 12 inches big, we ain’t messing with that big dog. No way.”

That humbling discipline helped Frazier deal with fame at a young age, but also helped him in his baseball career. It’s a sport where failure happens more than success, and the lessons Frazier received at a young age about life still remain relevant to him today.

“You go 5-5 one day and the next time you’re 0-20 and it’s like God, what’s going on,” Frazier says. “My dad taught me the right way. Those kind of things, not only was it the right thing to do, I was a very emotional kid. I was very hyper. Sometimes I got too excited so he’d bring me aside and say, ‘Chill out a little bit.’ I respected that because he’s the guy, he’s your father. You gotta respect him.

“He knew best. Most of the time I didn’t think so as a young kid because you’re a little brat. You think back on it and every step of the way he did the right thing.”

* * *

Toms River, N.J., is a city of a little over 90,000 situated on New Jersey’s coastline about halfway between New York and Atlantic City. It’s about equidistant from New York and Philadelphia, with a ride to each city taking about an hour and a half.

Its beachfront boardwalk area has been featured on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and MTV’s Jersey Shore, but back in the 1990s, it was known predominantly for its baseball prowess.

In addition to the Fraziers, the Leiter brothers — Al and Mark, who pitched a combined 30 years in the majors — hail from the area, as does former major league reliever and Seattle Mariners general manager Jerry DiPoto. Todd’s brother, Jeff, played for Toms River East in the 1995 and 1996 Little League World Series, too.

Charlie Frazier, Jr., runs a baseball academy in Toms River, at which Jeff helps out plenty (Todd does, too, when he’s back in the offseason). Even for a beachside town without a professional team, baseball is big here.

“Sometimes, I gotta hide,” says Todd’s father, “because — ‘Hey, about his swing, did he drop his hands on that one or did he pull them in?’”

Staying close to home has always been important to the Fraziers, even if it means the occasional question about a cold stretch Todd is going through.

When faced with a decision about where to play his college ball, Frazier didn’t go to a baseball powerhouse in the ACC or anything like that. Only 23 Rutgers alums have ever played in the major leagues, and of those Scarlet Knights, Frazier has appeared in the third-most games behind Eric Young and David DeJesus. And he’s the first one to appear in multiple All-Star games.

But the decision to attend Rutgers wasn’t described as a difficult one by his friends and family.

“He’s a Jersey guy through and through,” Descafano said.

* * *

Frazier, his wife, Jackie, son, Blake, and daughter, Kylie, all reside in Toms River. Given his upbringing, it makes plenty of sense that he’d choose to raise his family in this town alongside the Atlantic Ocean.

“I love the city, I love the town,” Frazier says. “… It’s just a close-knit group that you have and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

While Todd can’t be there much during the season, by having his family in Toms River, there’s a strong support system there for his wife and kids. His brothers and parents see his family about once or twice a week, and there’s always a get-together before Jackie & Co. leave to join Todd on the road.

And when the family comes back after those trips, there’s always an offer on the table to lend assistance. Jeff and his wife will offer to watch after the kids for a day to help out Jackie, which has the added benefit of helping those young cousins bond with each other.

“It’s not like (Jackie’s) coming home and going to Scottsdale (Ariz.) to a house with a bunch of neighbors you barely even talk to,” Jeff says.

In the offseason, Todd always makes it a point to get back to his prep alma mater — Toms River South High School — to see how the football team looks and hang out with some of the locals who’ve been there since he was a teenager. Descafano says Todd always makes time to see his parents when he’s back, too.

“I’m a New Jersey guy, I’m always there to sign an autograph, if they say Rutgers or Toms River, I’m always there to have a one-minute conversation with them,” Todd says. “It’s just something that makes me feel at home and I feel good about it.”

Some of the more special moments in the Frazier family come not only on holidays, but on those offseason nights where the three brothers and their wives and kids are all together. The ability to make those get-togethers a normal occurrence is something the family cherishes, with Todd’s parents and brothers also residing in Toms River.

“It brings it back to normal to the old days,” Charlie Jr. says. “Our wives start yelling at us because it starts to get a little heated with us talking crap on each other, we’ll start throwing the football outside and the kids will start yelling and screaming if we’re not throwing to the kiddies. It brings us back to the old days. You have your bickering here and there and it brings back a lot of memories. There’s always Italian food there. We’re in Jersey so you always have some kind of pizza or garlic bread or something.

“We always say, eat your Italian food, Todd, get those calories.”

* * *

For the third consecutive year, Charlie Frazier, Jr., will pitch to Todd in the Home Run Derby Monday night at Petco Park in San Diego. The Fraziers finished second in 2014, then won the 2015 home run derby in front of Frazier’s then-home crowd in Cincinnati.

A day after winning the Home Run Derby, baseball’s All-Stars were paraded to Great American Ballpark through downtown Cincinnati on the back of Chevy pickup trucks. Charlie Frazier, Sr., gets emotional thinking about the sight he saw there — a throng of fans going wild cheering for his son. It was a bookend of sorts to the 1998 parade celebrating Toms River East’s Little League World Series championship.

“There are some things — I don’t know what to tell you,” Charlie Frazier, Sr., says. “It’s just very humbling for me. Oh my God, look at what this kid has done.”

Charlie Frazier, Jr., agrees: “It was the first time our family got to sit back and go, holy shit, baseball’s been very good to us.”

But make no mistake, the Fraziers still won’t let anything slide with Todd. If Charlie Sr., Charlie Jr., Joan or Jeff ever see anything they don’t like, they won’t hesitate to call Todd out on it.

“He’s not that big a deal to us,” Charlie Sr. says.

“The reputation around Toms River, New Jersey is level-headed kids, down to earth and we’ll never let that get away,” Jeff adds. “He knows that.”

In that respect, not much has changed since Frazier hit that home run and earned the win in the Little League World Series championship 17 years ago. That swing, that final pitch, that celebration, and the Frazier family structure go a long way toward explaining who Todd Frazier is today.

“I think that stage right there in the Little League World Series was the start of something good for me and for the city and my family,” Todd says.

But through his journey to the major leagues and All-Star Games and Home Run Derbies, Frazier always carries Toms River, N.J., with him.

Even if it’s in the form of, again, the best coffee cake in the world.

JJ Stankevitz

JJ Stankevitz joined CSNChicago.com as its Notre Dame Insider in 2011 and has covered the Irish ever since. Since joining the beat, he’s covered Notre Dame’s 2012 BCS Championship berth, the Manti Te’o girlfriend saga and multiple academic suspensions, as well as personal favorite Troy Niklas. Stankevitz also covers the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs on a regular basis for CSNChicago.com and previously filled in on the Chicago Fire beat both as an intern and staffer from 2010-2012. A graduate of the University of Missouri during its Big 12 years, Stankevitz co-founded a sports multimedia journalism class that still is taught to this day.